I Can't Begin to Tell You (17 page)

‘There’s something going on, Kay. You’re acting oddly. You … look different.’ His eyes were as dark a blue as she had ever seen them. Moving over to the door, he made to leave,
checked himself and swung round. ‘You know there’s nothing more important to me than you and the children?’

‘Yes, yes. I do.’

‘But I don’t know whether you know that, any more. I don’t know what you’re thinking. Or whether I can rely on you.’

‘Is this about Anton? Or politics?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

Her discarded blouse on the chair with one of its shell buttons hanging by a thread … a tiny drift of powder on the dressing table … the jewellery case with the Eberstern pearls on the bed … How curious that, at this moment, she would notice these things.

‘I think Anton means something to you and you are … well, seeing him.’

Bror had handed her a solution on a plate. She trembled at the implications. How pernicious would it turn out to be if she took it? Enough to cause them profound pain. Possibly tear up their lives?

Nevertheless, a point had been reached.

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I do.’

She shifted her gaze to the floor – a guilty gesture. ‘I refuse to answer.’

‘I want to know.’

‘Please get out of here, Bror.’ Her hands were placed defensively on her chest. ‘And don’t come back. Not tonight.’ She paused. ‘Not for many nights. Go and sleep somewhere else. Until we sort this out. But, the way I feel, it won’t be soon.’

His lips went white. ‘It
is
Anton.’ Kay was silent. ‘Isn’t it?’

She made herself look up into his face. ‘It’s true I like Anton very much.’

Without another word, he turned on his heel and left the bedroom.

Kay’s knees gave way and as she sank onto the bed her
bandaged thumb snagged on the coverlet. She had cut it deeper than she intended and the wound stung.

So did the internal wound.

The following morning, an exhausted Kay waited with twenty or so others outside Lippiman’s bakery in Køge.

A queue for Lippiman’s bread had become a feature of the war. If it was raining, it made for misery – and played havoc with the women’s hair. Sometimes, however, unless it was bitterly cold, standing outside for a few minutes and enjoying the aroma of freshly baked bread was pleasant enough.

She thought of Tanne’s birth. That had been another bitter winter’s day. During her labouring, she had taken comfort from the sight of the ash tree, its branches rimed by a deep frost, outside the bedroom window at Rosenlund. Just before the moment of the baby’s arrival, the setting sun tipped it with fire. Weeping from pain, she watched the light change and wondered if she would live to see the next day.

She recalled, too, a memory from the early days with Bror, when he drove her triumphantly into Køge for the first time. ‘But it’s old,’ she had exclaimed, then blushed when Bror teased her back: ‘Darling, it’s not only the English who have a history. We have a history. A distinct one.’

When they were small, Nils and Tanne badgered Arne to tell them the local stories. ‘Let me see,’ he would say. ‘Do you mean the one about the naval battle in Køge harbour during which Sweden was trounced?’ He had a chest-load of yarns: of monster fishing catches, of midsummer celebrations and, of course, of the Køge ghost that sailed a ghostly boat out to sea. In summer the boat was said to skim over the water. In winter it broke through the creaking, shape-shifting ice.

The queue shuffled forward. A couple of women with plaits pinned round their heads had forgone the customary headscarf, and they must have been regretting the cold. There was
an elderly man in a coat too big for him and a girl with a shawl and no coat, who shivered visibly.

In the past, the queue would undulate with gossip but a wartime bread queue was different. There was no ongoing conversational murmur, and no jokes. Voices were hushed and muted and, as Kay observed, there were several in the queue who were keeping a sharp eye on the others.

Inside the bakery, the morning’s bake of rye loaves had been set out on the shelves by the door, displaying a spectrum of browns, from light tan to burnished ebony.

‘Good morning,
Hr
Lippiman.’ She handed over to him her basket containing the bundle of
Frit Danmark
wrapped up in a napkin. ‘Birgit asked me to buy four loaves.’

Lippiman placed the basket containing the bundle on the shelf below the counter. He appeared calm and focused. As she watched, he whipped out the package and dropped it into an empty bag of flour which he pushed with his foot further under the counter.

He put three loaves into the basket and held up the fourth one. ‘It’s a little soft,’ he explained, packing it in. Only now did he look directly at Kay. ‘I hope you have a good day,
Fru
Eberstern. My regards to
Frøken
Eberstern. Tell her I’ll have her favourite gingerbread tomorrow.’

Kay laughed. ‘If I know my daughter she’ll be down.’

The roads had seemed clear and she had driven to Køge in the trap. Loki was bored and fidgety and Kay took extra care guiding him across the marketplace. Loki trotted past the Town Hall – built in 1552, as Bror informed her all those years ago – and the Monument on the harbour. She always forgot in whose honour it had been erected but, bearing a similarity to Cleopatra’s Needle in London, it reminded her of home. As they passed the circular Water Tower genially presiding over the town, Kay looked up.

Why, oh why, did there have to be a war?

Arne’s
street fronted onto the canal. His house was one of the older ones. A modest building with dimpled glass in the windows, painted the blue of a sunlit sea. Bror regularly urged Arne and Birgit to take up his offer to live on the Rosenlund estate. To no avail. The cottage having been in Arne’s family for generations, the couple were not budging.

Kay brought Loki to a halt. Maintaining a tight hand on the reins, she knocked on the door with her whip. ‘Arne, are you there?’

While she waited, a man and woman walked past. He was in a navy-blue pea jacket, she in a dun-coloured raincoat and a home-knitted wool hat. They seemed hurried. Awkward.

‘Do you know them?’ She pointed out the couple to Arne when he emerged from the cottage.

‘I don’t ask,
Fru
Eberstern. Nor should you. People come and go here these days. Spying for the Germans, or trying to escape from the Germans … who knows?’ He swung himself up and kidnapped the reins from Kay. ‘Shall we go?’

Kay fastened her jacket up tight and arranged the rug over them both. ‘The roadblocks have been taken down.’

Loki wound himself up to a trot and, avoiding the main thoroughfares, Arne drove them through the side streets and onto the Rosenlund road.

They talked together comfortably in a conversation ranging over repairs to the house and farm matters and, because the Germans were taking as much of it as they could lay their hands on, how pork was at a premium. Arne let slip that pigs were being smuggled into the butcher for slaughter, and the wives of the workers on the estate were secretly making hams and salamis to be hidden away.

Eventually, he asked, ‘Your thumb,
Fru
Eberstern?’

Kay stripped off her glove and poked under the dressing. ‘Looks as though it will take time to heal.’

Arne peered down at the oozing scab. ‘Don’t let it become poisoned.’

At
Rosenlund, the day was punctuated by Kay’s usual commitments but, when it began to grow dark, she slipped away to the pigeon loft.

Hector fixed her with bright eyes. ‘Hello, boy.’ Kay checked over his water and feed. ‘Don’t you look sleek and rested? But you won’t be put in danger if I have anything to do with it.’ Her voice sounded ghostly in the cold loft. ‘Just remember, you don’t speak English.’

England …

Don’t think about England
. But she did. She did and it hurt. It hurt. And she thought how strange it was to be reminded so viscerally that the umbilical still stretched between her and her mother country.

On her return to the house, she paused for a moment to look at it. The light from the windows cast pathways across the lawn and gardens and, out on the lake, the winter ice was as thick as it could be. She knew it so well. The beads of air trapped in the frozen water created a white palette which sparkled on sunny days but turned grey and melancholy on the bleak ones.

It would be a long time until, once again, they heard the shuffle and roar of ice melt which heralded spring … until white anemones and snowdrops flowered under the maples and the smell of wild garlic sifted through the air.

She bit her lip.

Sif and Thor hoved into sight. Behind them came a familiar figure.

‘Tanne!’ Kay smiled. ‘You gave me a fright.’

Tanne was wearing one of her father’s heavy tweed jackets and a woollen hat with ear-flaps which, years ago, Kay had bought her on a trip to Norway. She was flushed with cold.

‘Giving the dogs a run. What are
you
doing?’

‘Walking.’

‘You do a lot of walking these days.’ Tanne fell into step. ‘I’m curious.’

The
wind was getting up and Kay shivered. ‘Let’s go in.’

Inside the house, Kay pushed Tanne towards the porcelain stove in the hall. ‘Darling … quick, warm yourself up.’

The dogs clicked over the black and white marble tiles and made for their baskets.

The damp had made Tanne’s fair hair curl round her ears in a way which always delighted Kay and annoyed Tanne. She looked gorgeous and healthy and very alive.

Grinning broadly, Tanne pulled Kay to her and dug her hands into her mother’s pockets. ‘You’re a warmer option.’ There was a second or two of silence. ‘
Mor
, what’s this?’

Too late.

Before Kay could stop her, Tanne opened up the folded copy of
Frit Danmark
she had extracted from Kay’s pocket. ‘What on earth have you got here?’

‘Nothing. Give it back.’

But Tanne snatched it out of reach. Then she read out: ‘ “The caterpillar of the pale tussock moth
dasychira pudibunda
is destroying the beautiful Vallo beech woods.” ’ She frowned. ‘ “Slowly but surely, the caterpillars are feeding on the body of the beech and sucking it dry.” ’

‘
Mor!
Where did you get this?’

‘I picked it up from the street in Køge. It’s not worth reading.’

‘So why pick it up?’ Tanne ran her finger over it. ‘It’s not damp.’

‘Some time ago. I forgot it was in my pocket.’

Tanne raised an eyebrow. ‘Even I can see that this is political satire.’ She folded the paper over. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Burn it.’

Tanne ignored her. ‘ “Denmark must retrieve its honour.” So that’s what you have been thinking about during the
walking
?’

Kay took the pamphlet out of Tanne’s hand, opened the grill and dropped it into the stove. ‘Most of us have to consider
the war and how we feel,’ she said as reasonably as she could manage. She brushed back the mass of Tanne’s hair, and added: ‘But we have to be careful.’

‘Don’t fob me off,
Mor
.’ Tanne allowed Kay to fuss over the hair. ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’

‘Nothing to tell.’

Tanne stepped back.

It seemed that, in Kay’s war, the people she had to trust were strangers, not her dearest and most loved. The conclusion was unsettling, queasy making.

Tanne changed the subject. ‘You must be worried about Gran and the aunts.’

‘Yes.’ Kay took off her jacket. ‘Yes, yes. I keep telling myself that they’ll be safer in countryside. It’s London and the cities that are being bombed.’

‘But do you approve of what your country is doing?’

‘Tanne! It’s half your country, too.’

‘So it is. I forget.’ Tanne picked up her discarded hat and drifted towards the staircase. ‘See you at dinner.’

Most people would imagine that the subject was closed but Kay was an expert in reading her daughter. She knew Tanne. It would not be the last that she heard on
Frit Danmark
and she knew that she would have to consider carefully how to handle Tanne’s questions. Knowing that she must lie to her daughter gave her a desolate feeling.

She went in search of Birgit and discovered her in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to the chicken pie. ‘Arne is waiting for you,’ she told her. ‘Go home. I’ll manage in the kitchen.’

Birgit looked scandalized. Kay realized that her instruction ran counter to the other woman’s notions of order, and of how things should be done.

She prised the knife away from Birgit, saying, ‘Arne needs you back in your own house.’ She glanced at the window where the frost patterns were forming. ‘It’s getting colder. I’ve arranged for Frau Nielsen’s Else to come in to serve.’

‘Little
Else?’ Birgit sounded puzzled. ‘She’s better than me?’

‘Birgit, I was trying to save you trouble.’

‘
Fru
Eberstern, trouble is my job.’

‘I know, Birgit. But this wretched war means we have to adapt.’

‘The war,
Fru
Eberstern, means we must not let things go.’

‘Go home, Birgit. Arne is waiting and you are tired. I know you are.’

For a moment Birgit was stilled in her perpetual bustle. Pink suffused her cheeks. ‘Maybe. Just this once.’ She took off her apron. ‘But it is not good to let things go.’

On first arriving at Rosenlund, Kay had been introduced to a staff of twelve, including two housemaids, and instructed in all aspects of running a house, from the storeroom to the laundry to the menus. Every morning fires were laid, and the gravel in the drive outside was raked smooth.

These days the gravel remained churned up for long periods. The staff had been whittled down to Birgit and two of the wives from the estate who came in part-time, plus little Else.

That other life, predictable, ordered, innocent – above all the innocence – was now a long time ago.

Bror and Tanne had spent the morning together combing over the estate accounts and they talked dairy yields all through dinner that night.

Thank God, thought Kay, and she tackled Birgit’s chicken pie in silence.